Clark’s Journal:
Christmas Wednesday 25th December 1805
at day light this morning we we[re] awoke by the discharge of the fire arm[s] of all our party and a Selute, Shouts and a Song which the whole party joined in under our windows, after which they retired to their rooms were cheerful all the morning, after brackfast we divided our Tobacco which amounted to twelve carrots one half of which we gave to the men of the party who used tobacco, and to those1 who doe not use it we make a present of a handkerchief, The Indians leave us in the evening all the party Snugly fixed in their huts. I reeved a pres[e]nt from Capt. L.of a fleece hosrie [hosiery] Shirt Draws and Socks, a pr. Mockersons of Whitehouse a Small Indian basket of Gutherich, two Dozen white weazils tails of the Indian woman, and some black root of the Indians before their departure.
BERNARD DEVOTO, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, p. 294.
“Umbea, umbea, um-be-a!” called the toddling papoose. His feet were bare, and his knees bruised and scratched. He wore only a small leather shirt with a single row of red and white beads across the front yoke.
“Here I am,” called Sacajawea, brushing the sand from her brown-leather skirt and the large old blue coat. Her hair was neatly braided and wound about her head. She wore no ornament except the small, sky blue stone on the thin thong of her throat. To wear many ornaments was the prerogative of the male, she believed. Her baby laughed as she grasped him about the middle and swung him into her arms. Her son clung to her and snuggled himself into the folds of the coat. He put his arms deep into the wide pockets.
She began to feel better, watching the carefree baby. He poked one wiggly brown foot into a pocket. His round face was solemn. She knew he was playing a game and enjoying himself immensely, yet he was not loud or riproarish. He played entirely for the fun of it, because he had nothing but the present moment to worry him. She spoke aloud to herself: “Like my son—I’ll take each sunrise as it comes.” In her resolve she must have squeezed her baby, for he gave a little yelp.
She sat with Pomp in her lap on the damp sand and looked over the expedition’s camp. It was a good place even with the sand in the clothing, bedding, and food Pomp’s eyes were heavy with sleep. He stubbornly refused to lie on the big blue coat, denying that he was sleepy. Sacajawea coaxed him to curl up in her lap; one arm was still in a pocket.
The day was still, and she felt drowsy. She though of the latest talk among the men. They wanted salt for their food. Chief Red Hair had spoken of it more than once. And they wanted a better campsite for the winte months. She knew the expedition was going to stay in this area through the winter because no one would survive the trip back upstream and over the mountains a this time of year. Anyway, the men were exhausted Sacajawea could see the fatigue in their eyes. Their clothing was in shreds and they all needed red meat in their diet.
Shannon came out on the sand and sat beside her. He was quiet for a time; then he said, “I hope a trading ship or two come before spring. Maybe we wouldn’t have to go up the Columbia and over those blasted mountains if it did. We could all get on that ship and sail home.”
Sacajawea looked at Shannon in disbelief.
“Well, I heard the captains talking about it. You know Captain Lewis has a letter of credit from the American government, so there would be no trouble in dealing with traders who might come to our camp from some seagoing vessel. I think the captains hope the traders can supply them with trade goods, trinkets, for the different tribes on our return trip. You know there’s a shortage of colored beads, looking glasses, and combs. The captains just gave away too much. And to make it worse, these Chinooks ask for too many fish hooks and awls for their wormy salmon.”
“Shannon,” she said seriously, “we will collect all the seashells to use for trading. The river tribes love them.” She picked up two small pink shells and handed them to Shannon.
“That’s an idea!” He made a heap of them beyond the tide line. “Hey, I almost forgot, there’s some Chinooks in camp. Let’s see what they are talking about.”
Everyone seemed to be talking at once, using hand signs, to find where the best hunting was. “Deer,” one Chinookian answered, “is most plentiful farther up the river.” “Elk,” another Chinookian said, “are found on the south shore of the bay. Everyone knows elk are larger, give better meat, and are easier to kill.”
After the evening meal there was a council. The men discussed the best site for the winter camp. Each member of the expedition was given a chance to talk if he wished. Ben York suggested laying in a large supply of elk hides so that he and Janey could sew moccasins, so there would be enough for the return trip. Shannon spoke up and said he would be willing to help Sacajawea make trousers if they could be stored in a dry place so that they would not have green mold when they were ready to be worn. “Damn damp climate,” the nineteen-year-old snorted.
“Would you rather camp in them mountains?” hooted Pete Wiser.
“If they are drier,” said Shannon.
“We get to them mountains and there’s bound to be ten, fifteen feet of snow. I had enough of froze feet, myself,” said York.
“A camp on the south shore would be best for making contact with a trading ship that might come by,” offered Sacajawea, surprising everyone. “And I’m in favor of a camp where plenty of quamash roots can be dug for bread and beer.”
“Hooray!” shouted Pat Gass. He was on his feet hopping around in a show-offish manner, and the men laughed, waking Pomp.
Pomp climbed off his mother’s lap and trotted after his father, then with a giggle seated himself in Captain Clark’s lap.
Gass knocked a toe against a rock, hopped around, holding his toe with both hands and cutting loose with curse words. “Something in that damn rock got it in for me!” He eased his foot down. “Damned ambusher, that rock!”
Captain Lewis raised his arms, announcing that there would be a vote on the place for the winter campsite. “For a yes, raise your right hand. Who would like to stay here?”
A little moment of silence came. No one moved. Then Sacajawea, who had stood up, put in a question. “Here? No one wants to stay here. We all know the south shore is best. Anyone who does not raise his hand for the south shore can stay here and eat fish.”
Clark laughed into his hand and was so amused by Janey speaking out in quite good English in the expedition’s council that he set her words down in the official journal that evening.
Captain Lewis was not so amused. “Wasn’t it a bit irregular to have a squaw and her man, who’s a citizen of Canada, and your manservant, York, and Shannon, a boy barely nineteen, vote as though they were U.S. citizens with the rest of us on this military expedition?” He paused and took a deep breath. “This was an important decision.”
“Now, Lewis,” pacified Clark, as the sweetest of smileswreathed his lips, “isn’t this whole expedition unorthodox in so many ways?”
“Oh, Lord! You’re so right! But I must say I call it bad manners—downright bad manners—for that squaw to speak up so—” He broke off abruptly and cast a glance at Clark.
Clark ran a finger along the neck of his leather shirt, as if to ease his throat. “A woman! A mere girl at that—she took the words from your mouth. Go ahead, admit it. You were going to say the exact words in your next breath. You wanted the men to vote for the south shore and plenty of elk meat!”
“Yes, I did! But Lord help me, the next time she speaks up and asks for something—”
‘Takes the words from your mouth, you mean,” teased Clark. “You’ll probably grant her wish. You know she doesn’t ask much. I daresay your grandchild won’t read the history of the United States without reading of you and me and of her, with fearless men crossing the prairies and mountains, enduring hardship and privation. We are a close-knit group with a terrible and rigid goodness that comes with work and self-denial.” Clark feigned enormous dignity.
Lewis looked a little sheepish and said, “For Lord’s sake, forget I said a thing.”
There was more rain and high waves as the expedition crept back along the shore the way they had come, looking for a place where the estuary was narrow enough to cross to the south shore. It was hard to find firewood that was dry enough to burn. The blankets were wet again and mildewed. The big leather tent was in shreds and no protection at all. Some of the men used their frayed blankets to make crude lean-tos, but they were so full of holes that nothing was kept dry.
During the last of November, there were a few days that were warm, when the leaves browned, and the grass ripened in the sun, and the reflection of light from the water lasted until long after nightfall. But afterward the sky blackened and rain fell, and from that time until spring the rain never totally stopped and sunlight never shone over the land or sea. Except on the line of surf, the sea itself was like ink. The tremendous winds that blew out of it carried fierce twisters of rain that turned everything inside out as they passed. The shifting winds blew smoke from the campfire into the men’s eyes, which soon became painful from that irritation. Then they began to wonder how they were going to get along when they found deer but no elka even geese were wary of hunters.
Ben York noticed that the weather was hard for the papoose. He was by turns unruly and listless. He told Pomp tales that were Negro folklore, handed down by word of mouth through the years. Like the songs Sacajawea remembered her grandmother singing, these were primitive accounts of the sorrows and tribulations of a wronged people and their inevitable reward in the afterlife.
“And the angel say to him, he say, ‘Mose, come up on this here throne and eat ‘cause you are hungry, and drink ‘cause you are thirsty, and rest you weary and aching feet.’”
Sometimes Pomp rode on Clark’s back and heard stories that invariably began with the magic words, “Once upon a time just like this—” There would follow a nursery tale or one of Aesop’s fables. Pomp remembered the English words and repeated them—“fox, rabbit, wolf, horse, man, woman.” That the listener was hardly a year old and incapable of comprehending what he heard made no difference to Clark. He was determined that the boy learn English and was pleased when he responded so quickly.
A few days later, the expedition, tired and wet from riding in the canoes, came to a knob of land projecting about a mile and a half toward a shallow bay, and about four miles around. The neck of land, which connected it to the main shore, was more than fifty yards wide. Lewis called the projection Point William2 for William Clark, and there the men landed the canoes and set up another temporary camp. The stones on shore were brilliant reds and greens and white. Sacajawea scooped up handfuls for Pomp to play with.
One of the canoes had a wide split and needed repairing. Before that job was finished, the wind shifted to the northwest and blew with such fury that trees were uprooted near the camp. “We must move out ofhere right away,” said Sacajawea. That night there was rain and hail; sleep was fitful and miserable.
The next day, the rain let up, for several hours. Sacajawea spread out blankets and clothing to dry, then sat on the beach to watch the birds. Eagles, hawks, ravens, and crows picked up small salmon floundering on the shore where they were washed in. She liked the beach. It was clean, away from the snakes, lizards, and spiders, but not the sand fleas that seemed to follow her everywhere. Then there was rain that night and the next day. Her nerves wore thin as she bucked mud, sand, and wet brush for the sake of a bit of dry land.
Captain Clark sighed, “How long? Can it rain forever?”
Even the Chinooks turned short-tempered and asked for two axes, three knives, and a good blanket for one fifty-pound fish, though they had been around this area for generations of continuous residence to get accustomed to the climate.
The men lost weight and color, and squabbled incessantly. Captain Clark’s stomach became upset, probably from so much pounded fish and salty water.
Sacajawea, always watchful, pulled out a soggy piece of bread from under her blanket folds. It was made of wheat flour, not the wapato roots everyone had come to loathe. She had been saving the good bread for Pomp. She now offered it to the ailing Chief Red Hair. The ancient and dubious biscuit was a little sour, but Clark ate it with relish, saying, “That is the only bit of food I’ve had in weeks that was not fishy or salty and that sits firm inside my stomach.” He tweaked Pomp’s little brown nose. “I ate your muffin.”
Pomp replied with a wide, baby grin, “Num, num, num.”
The next afternoon, soon after the canoes were beached, Sacajawea lay Pomp on the blue coat for a nap while she hunted colored seashells. Clark sat with her and put some he found in an empty canister. The two became so engrossed with the beauty of the shapes and designs and colors, and the small, smooth stones of agate they saved, that they did not at first see the dark clouds forming to warn them of the coming storm. Sacajawea jumped up and pointed skyward and began torun toward camp with Pomp. Clark followed. York came toward them and took Pomp in his arms and hurried him safely back to camp. Sacajawea and Clark followed. Then both stopped to look back. There was the black center of the storm coming in from the water and churning the flat water into a wall of foam ten or twelve feet high. Clark started on to keep the wave from overtaking them, but Sacajawea was fascinated and climbed to a high, flat stone.
“Let’s let it catch us!” she called, daring him. “It won’t hurt us here—will it? Come see what it does.”
Suddenly the wind hit so hard that Clark staggered and had to sit down. Sacajawea ran to him, and water plastered them in a solid sheet. Through it she saw in a kind of blur that Clark was laughing. When she opened her mouth to talk, the water beat on it and stopped it so she could not say a word. The rain slackened and passed on, and the two ran down the beach, now trying to overtake it and face it down again, but it outran them. They were drenched but laughing. He drew a great breath and let it out again as Sacajawea ran into his arms. He pushed the hair from her eyes and smiled at her. The touch of his firm, callused hand was like running fire.
“You smell good, like the crushed ginger weed.” He sniffed and sighed, still holding her. He found himself suddenly throbbing with love. He thrust his right hand behind her head and bent to kiss her full on the mouth. She took hold of him and held her arms tightly around the small of his back, not wanting to let him go. His lips were warm, and she marveled at the strength of them and how their strength was transferred to her own lips.
“You have used sorcery on me, Janey. I could not help myself,” said Clark, pulling away and smiling into her eyes. “We must hurry back now, before it is too late.” He looked sideways at her and felt a rush of gentleness toward her because she, too, was trying to hold back the power that had risen with the beating of their hearts.
“Ai, York will come looking, thinking the ocean has swallowed us.” She felt her lips and wondered how theycould feel like burning coals and her knees weak as water.
She’s got me roped as tight as a horse plowing a field in spring, and I don’t know that I have any more to gain than the horse, he thought as he followed the figure in the brown tunic with his eyes until she disappeared in the trees this side of the camp.
He crossed the rocks beyond the beach and walked in the same direction. He stopped and arranged some of the baggage and inspected the repaired canoe. Then he talked to Bill Werner, who was on south guard duty. He felt he had his emotions in control. He vowed not to let himself be carried away by his heart, not to let his guard down again. He was a captain of the United States Army and responsible for this outfit. His first duty was to his men and to his co-captain. Janey, God bless her, had a man.
After the storm, dozens of huge birds swooped down for the easy food. The men called the big birds vultures, but they were larger than any vulture anyone had ever seen before. Baptiste LePage shot one down, and it measured nine and a half feet from wing tip to wing tip, three feet, ten and a half inches from the point of its bill to the tip of its tail. The tail itself was fourteen and a half inches long, and the head and beak six and a half inches.3 York added the vulture to the three hawks and three ducks the hunters brought in later that afternoon for the evening meal. The hunters had seen elk sign, and the news brightened everyone’s spirits.
Captain Lewis managed to get a small canoe across to Point William, only to find that there were swamps on the south shore that would make overland travel impossible. He turned back to Meriwether Bay4 and found a site along a little river called Netual5 by the Chinooks. This place was ten miles from the Pacific Ocean, but within hearing of the dark, angry breakers. Selecting a high point on the west bank of the Netual, so that the permanent camp would be out of swampy land and the incoming high tide, Captain Lewis went back for the men to start work on shelter and fortifications.
* * *
Captain Clark and Drouillard walked northwest, exploring the coast. They were often in mud and water to their hips, walking through bogs where the weight of a man would shake a half acre of ground. Drouillard was eager to explore and leave the cedar cutting for the winter cabins to the others. Clark was dubious about finding anything in the way of game, so he kept his notebook out so that he could sketch an unusual tree or plant. Clark was feeling a little uncertain about himself at this time, but he was eager to see this new country and talk to natives he had not seen before. Besides, the farther away he was from Janey, the better. If Janey wanted him for some silly advice or to answer some fool question, she could think of someone else. As for this exploring, if he didn’t find anything he would quit, even though he had told Drouillard they might be gone a couple of days.
It was afternoon when they came upon a small group of Chinooks. One of the men came forward and shook hands with both Clark and Drouillard, cleared his throat, and said, “Sturgeon very good.” After the initial surprise wore off, the men felt disappointment because apparently that was the only English the man knew. Drouillard sat with the man and used hand signs and jargon as they passed a pipe back and forth. The man said that once in a while the Chinooks attacked the white men that came off the ships, but they had not planned to attack the men of the expedition because there was not so much to gain. The expedition did not have many trading goods the Chinooks wanted. Drouillard found that the Chinooks were mainly interested in alcohol.
Around dusk they found a quiet, grassy spot protected from the wind where Clark could write in his notebook and sort out the day’s leaf and twig specimens. Silently several Clatsops, from a village on the south side of a line of boulders, crept close to the two men to observe them. Clark saw them and drew rough sketches of these silent observers. They were dark, their complexions running to deep brown rather than reddish. All seemed fat, and their faces had a combination of stupidity and covetousness. The females were tattooed on their lower lip with charcoal embedded under theskin, which left them with a line of dusky blue, as though they had spent the day in an elderberry patch.
The next morning Clark and Drouillard visited the Clatsop village. The people knew they were Clatsops, but somewhere in all the years of their existence they had forgotten or found it unnecessary to know the name of their particular tribe. They used strings of mussel shells ground into cylindrical beads for money, but were willing to go along with the barter system if they could purchase metal fish hooks. Their houses were built from the abundant supply of cedar planks and were window-less and rotten smelling. This was partly due to unwashed bodies and no ventilation, but mainly because of the small, dried smelt that were fastened by the tail in shell and pottery bowls and placed all along the walls. When burned they gave off a white light.
“They are as good as our candles, if you like the smell of putrefying fish,” commented Drouillard.
They ate this little candlefish with the villagers. Clark called them “anchovie,” and put several on the end of a wooden stick to roast. They were so fat they needed no additional sauce.
These Clatsops lived mostly on fish. They did trap some game and killed it with a bow and arrow at a range of from two to five feet. Clark and Drouillard watched them trap wild ducks by setting decoys on a brush-covered hole in the marshes, hiding under it until a flock landed, then grabbing their legs and pulling them underwater to drown.
They learned the Clatsop trick of treating the little creeks with a few bushels of hemlock bark. Then the stupefied speckled trout would float up by the bucketful.
Vegetable products were scarce; besides wild crab-apple, the Clatsop women picked a coppery-tinged wild sorrel, which, after cooking, Clark thought had the flavor of rhubarb.
The second evening at the Clatsop village Clark brought out his sketch materials. His first subject was a child sleeping in a cradleboard with a flattening board covering the top half of its head. While sketching, Clark thought of the ease with which these people lived, with food and shelter and clothing at their fingertips. Yet, he could think of nobody who would trade places with them. They had not perfected any great skill in arts or crafts or thinking; their easy living was not conducive to creativity. On the other hand they were not warlike and did not even try to explore new places along the coastline.
By the third day both Clark and Drouillard had seen enough of these self-contained, contented people, so the two men headed for the expedition’s camp. They discussed the unknown past and future of the indolent Clatsop band. Had the Clatsops’ ancestors landed on the shore in some small craft, or had they trekked overland in small hunting parties in the prehistoric past? Had these people once been warriors and recently tired of that uncertain life? At present they seemed to be going nowhere. If they all died out suddenly no other tribe would grieve. This one group had followed a trail to nonentity. On the other hand, the men argued, these people had no stress and were happy with the way things were.
Clark and Drouillard noticed the strong mixture of odors from the wild flowers and vegetation that hung in the thick forest’s unmoving air as they made their way back to camp. The balsam poplar buds were covered a glistening, freeze-resistant, winter coat of resin, making them look as large as peace medals. This ball of sticky resin was delightfully fragrant. The mosquitoes were a great annoyance and didn’t seem repelled by an application of rancid bear’s oil.
Back at camp the two men could not contain their curiosity and asked Sacajawea what she knew about the woody substance a few of the idle Clatsops chewed that turned their saliva blood red. She thought a moment, then said it was probably from the inner bark of the red alder and that the people probably chewed it to ward off diarrhea. Intrigued by this information Clark and Drouillard made a study of the alder that grew as large as three feet thick in every damp place. They found that the fresh wood was satiny white, but turned cherry red when it had been aged. Drouillard guessed that the bright color was tannic acid in the alder’s sap, which also explained the medicinal power of its inner bark.
During the weeks the men worked to get the winter cabins finished, they were troubled with dysentery, colds, aching muscles, colic, and boils because they worked out in the constant rain.
Clark and Drouillard tried the red alder medicine to relieve the distress of their dysentery. They soon found it worse than the disease. The moist, inner bark was so astringent that their mouths puckered for hours and the red juice made them look like they were bleeding to death. The soft wood tasted harshly bitter and biting and left their teeth ugly brown, which both men feared would become a permanent discoloration like the Clatsops’.
“This here timber makes the finest puncheons I ever saw,” said Pat Gass, with a carpenter’s appreciation of good white pine and cedar. “They can be split ten feet long and two feet broad, not more than an inch and a half thick.”
The logs were rolled up Boonesboro-fashion into winter shelters, made from some abandoned Clatsop boards that the Indians gave permission for the white men to use, fleas and all. By mid-December the men were chinking and mud-daubing the cabins. Using elk hides for weatherboards, they tightened up the cabins and began cutting doors.
The hunters had found plenty of elk by then, and the roasted meat helped cure the dysentery and colic. Mallard ducks settled wherever there was swampy ground, and the men managed to bushwhack a few with guns. Then they began to find plenty of deer, but complained because they were so small.6
Sacajawea stayed to herself, mending the tattered clothing and sewing new shirts, trousers, and moccasins as the hides became available. The issue of where she was going and whether she was headed directly there did not arise, for she knew she would spend time somehow—sleeping, eating, loafing—so she might as well spend it here; she would not die any sooner because she was here among white men. What is ahead in life is usually unknown.
She did not want to be troubled by the problems of her man, Charbonneau. She did not love him, but herlife because of him was good, so she felt a loyalty toward him. She wanted to be as free of him as possible so that he could not cast a net over her made of the strings of his dependence on her. Yet it was this avoidance of Charbonneau’s net that had run her directly into the strings of affection woven by Chief Red Hair.
It was to some extent to take her mind from him that she turned back to her memories. Those of her early childhood were pleasant. The memories of her later childhood were sharp and painful. Since her life with the white men, she had felt a belonging and a realization of their hold on her. They had their claws in her, like the sharp nails of a hawk fastened into a ground squirrel. It was not their conscious effort, but their endemic kindness. This kindness would remain with her, later not a memory of the past but of the present. It clinched her existence and her nature and twisted her, and she resented it in a kind of tender and anguished way. Why do I want to be like these white men and still be one of the People, especially when my childhood is a chaos of events?
By Christmas Day the fort was nearly done and the expedition men warm and dry, their colds nearly gone. They were living in the most luxurious quarters ever erected in Oregon country by 1805. They had spring water close by and wood enough down the draw. The cabins were sixteen by thirty feet. The south cabin contained a huge tree trunk that could not be removed. It was Shannon who had the great idea of smoothing off its top and making a table, and since it was rooted to the ground, the cabin had to be built around it.7 The doors of all eight cabins faced inward on a parade ground, forty-eight by twenty feet. The outer walls were joined by a stockade, eight feet high, with a gate and sentry box at the south end. The north buildings, for the noncommissioned men, were divided into three rooms. Each room was sixteen feet square with a fireplace in the middle. The south building had two officers’ rooms, each with a fireplace, and a separate storehouse, which was good—both for them and for the field mice and the wild rats that sneaked in at night. The sentry box was manned night and day. The gate was locked every night.
One sergeant and three privates constituted the guard, which changed each day at sunrise. All the natives were asked to leave at sundown, with the exception of one party of Chinooks caught barefoot in a freezing snowstorm late one afternoon.8
Captain Lewis had forbidden the “thieving Chinooks” to enter the fort without a special permit. Even on Christmas Day the guard was alert and stopped a small man with a hawklike face. He was bare to the waist and his breechclout seemed too big for his body, but he looked as though he had the strength and vitality to match even bigger clothing. He, like any Chinook, smelled of fish and carried lice. He said, “No Chinook!”
“Who, then?” asked the guard.
“Clatsop,” the man said, entering with wapato roots and cranberries.
“Beautiful,” said Captain Lewis, looking over the berries, “and they come on Christmas Day.” He gave the man a couple of files for the trade. The man squatted on his heels and poked the berries, not yet ready to leave.
While he was poking, Lewis called Drouillard to use his jargon with the man. The man puttered around the roots and rearranged them and chatted with Drouillard in a friendly manner, but rarely said more than “Yes” or “I think so.”
Finally he laced his fingers across his middle. “You know,” he said, “I talked those ignorant Klatskannins out of an attack on your camp. I told them your men were better hunters. They told me you would let the fish in the river die of old age while you tramp in the swamps after ducks and use the shooting-stick for the deer. But I think you know what you are doing. I have never seen such a lodge for keeping the wind out as this.” Then he settled back on his heels, looking small in his weather-bleached clout, but by his manner, clearly at ease with the strangers.
“What name do you go by?” asked Drouillard, all the time wondering if the Klatskannins were a large tribe and if there were any others in the vicinity who had similar ideas.
“The other tribes call me Yanakasac Coboway. My own tribe knows me as Chief Comowool.”
Lewis brought out some red beads and gave them to the chief. But he pushed them back at Lewis and pointed to the files, indicating that he could use more.
“Why? What for?” asked Lewis.
“We carve the designs on canoes with chisels made from iron files.”
Finally Drouillard stood up and stretched, saying, “The berries and roots are fine. Glad you came. Come to see us again. Tell the neighboring tribes we are peaceful; we have gifts for them.”
Chief Comowool chuckled, and from a small leather pouch pulled out some yellowed paper and began to roll a cigarette as white men do.
“Where did you learn that?” asked Lewis.
“Haley. He gives us all many gifts. He will be here in three moons to trade. He, too, is peaceful.”
“Where does he come from? Tell us in which direction his ship comes.” Lewis was excited.
Chief Comowool pointed to the south but was not able to give any other information about this trader, who seemed to be a favorite with the Indians.
By the time Chief Comowool left, several of the men had gathered in front of the officers’ cabin to sing carols. York boiled the wapato roots for the men’s noon meal, and Lewis surprised the men while they were still at the tables in the mess hall by dividing the remaining stock of tobacco, twelve pigtails into two parts and distributing one among them to the men who smoked. The rest was set aside for trading on the return trip. Sacajawea and the men who did not smoke were given a silk handkerchief.
Cruzatte took out his violin, and there was some dancing. He let Sacajawea play the violin while York tried to teach Pomp the polka. Pomp giggled so hard that he lay on the floor and kicked his fat legs in the dappled light from the fireplace. His tiny fists waved in the air, and he gurgled in his throat with delight over so much attention. He was a glorious specimen of man-child. His light brown skin was hardly a blemish in the eyes of his mother.
“He is a show-off,” said Sacajawea, handing the violin back to Cruzatte, who was pleased because she had not forgotten the tune he’d taught her.
York took her around the waist for a polka around the room. She learned fast, and LePage came forward to dance with her. “I am proud of my little namesake,” he said. “I am glad that your baby has my name, Jean Baptiste, because I can see you are going to bring him up in the right way. He’s not even a year old and he can walk!”
Shannon, not to be outdone, cut in to show Sacajawea the schottische. She got her feet mixed up, but kept a straight face and time to the music through it all. The men began to clap, and soon almost everyone was clapping or dancing.
“I want to begin the talking lessons again,” she said.
“You want to continue with the English?” asked Shannon. “I thought you were tired of it.”
“I thought you were sore at me because I learned too slow.”
“I’m glad you won’t give up.”
“I want Pomp to learn when he talks.”
“That’s easier than you think. That’s all he’ll hear if he stays around us.
“Can you teach me some of this jargon or some more Minnetaree and Shoshoni, if I don’t get it all mixed up?”
“Why would you want to know all that?”
“I might want to come back into Indian country,” he said. “Maybe I’ll set up a trading post. Fort Shannon. Boy, what a name, bejesus!”
“What a name, bejesus!” agreed Sacajawea. “The trading will be at the Three Forks for the People?”
“I’ll be a bull-tough mountain man out there,” Shannon answered.
Sacajawea picked up Pomp so he would not get in the way of the dancers, and he struck at her face. Every blow of the little hands touched the heart of Sacajawea. This son of hers would beat many a man twice his size. She would see that he learned the manners of the white men, and their language would be his language.
Outside the snug cabins there was wind and rain, making the ice slick. The slushy snow had frozen. The hunters had come in empty-handed. John Potts said, “Funny thing out here in the snow—I could see it take shape and bound away right before my eyes. It waswhite moving on white, white with dark eyes and a gray tuft of tail, white that was jackrabbits, but they ran before my gun was aimed.”
The food for this Christmas dinner was the boiled cranberries brought by Chief Comowool and sweetened with the last of the sugar cubes and some poor elk, so putrefied that they all ate it only from necessity. York had roasted it until it was dry, then added a few wapato roots for moisture.
Some of the men exchanged small gifts. Clark received a shirt, drawers, and socks from Lewis, moccasins from Whitehouse, and a woven basket of rushes from Goodrich.
Gass gave Pomp a set of pine blocks, made from the wood he used for the floorboards. Then the men’s eyes twinkled as if with some delightful secret as Clark cleared his throat and motioned for York to bring in something. It was a pine cradle for Pomp that the carpenter, Gass, had made from Clark’s instructions. At the headboard was a crude carving of a wild rose, made by Gibson, and at the foot was a bird, carved out by LePage. The men crowded around to see the look on her face.
Sacajawea could not hide her emotion; her whole heart was loosened and dissolved. “Oooo,” she said with her hand over her mouth. It was fearfully difficult to keep her eyes dry and her voice under control. “Beautiful! I say thank you. Pomp will say thank you by sleeping in this cradle.”
The baby climbed in unaided and rocked himself back and forth until his eyes closed and he was quiet.
“Merry Christmas, Janey,” said Clark.
She looked up, startled, but Clark smiled and made it easy for her to feel relaxed. “Hee-hee turn-turn,” she answered.
“A laughing heart to you and everyone,” Clark called out, translating her Chinook jargon.
Lewis had been watching her accept the cradle, and he thought to himself, Lord, that Janey has more emotion than I believed. He had brought a basket of blackberries in from the storage room. They were about the size of a cherry and dried. “Look what Clark has brought for me, everyone.” He shoved the basket on the planktable. “The Clatsops call them shelwell. I hope your bellies are grateful and they sit well.”
The men laughed and went over to try them. “Oui, let’s eat again,” said Charbonneau.
When the berries were almost all gone, the men relaxed and sang and told about other Christmases spent with their families. Sacajawea gave York a pair of beaded moccasins and shyly held out a leather bundle to Clark. “I bargained myself for this. It is a gift for a great chief. Merry Christmas,” she said in her fair English. Then she went on as though she were a spring that could not be stopped unwinding. “This is the birthday of the son of the white man’s Great Spirit. This day, long ago, a star stood guard over the lodge where the papoose slept in his cradle. It is a day to be happy and to make others happy.”
She caught everyone unawares with her knowledge of Christmas. Shannon had spent several hours with her that afternoon explaining the meaning of the white man’s big medicine day. Charbonneau, wearing a wide necklace of white shells around his neck, and much oil in his hair, was surprised at his squaw’s knowledge. He had not remembered gift-giving himself, but she had entered into the spirit of Christmas as if she had celebrated it all her life.
Clark let out a long whistle, and everyone stopped talking to look his way. “Wheeeiii! Great balls of fire! Where did you find these, Janey?”
The leather bundle held the two dozen white weasel tails. Tails such as these were one of the most prized forms of decoration among the North American Indian tribes.
“You must not give them away—not to a white squaw,” she said slowly. “Because squaws are not allowed to possess or wear tails the length of these. These are for a great chiefs ceremonial robe.” She fingered the snow white tails with the black at their very tips and a faint streak of palest gold staining the black.
Clark’s eyes were moist in the firelight. “Janey, it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. Ill never forget as long as I live.” His hand momentarily brushed hers.
Charbonneau was still eating bits of dried berriesand once in a while pulling off bits of meat from the tin platter in the center of the table. He ate the meat like an Indian, putting a piece in his mouth and cutting it off under his nose with a flip of a hunting knife. “Mon dieu,” he said, holding the knife poised close to his face, “I do not like bragging, but I have a collar of such tails, a gift to me.” He cut off a mouthful of hard, dried meat and forced it down his throat half-chewed.
“It was a very short-tailed collar, more for a child,” said Sacajawea, almost whispering.
“Hey, Charb,” called Ordway, “you blow a lot of wind and it’s meant mostly for the other end!”
Gass pointed his finger at Charbonneau. “Your ma never had to throw cold water on you to keep you from holding your breath.”
Charbonneau looked around at the men, then at Sacajawea. There was nothing of self-satisfaction in her expression, nor of egotistic basking in victory. Her face seemed drawn with weariness, the brown lids half-closed, and for an instant she seemed oblivious to those around her as she contemplated the lines in the framing timber of one wall.
“Oh, shit, squaws exaggerate.” Charbonneau flushed and stomped out, slamming the door. The afternoon rain had melted most of the snow and ice. He walked from the fort to the beach, where he could almost see the bay run out into the sea. He stood for several moments. As far as his eye could see, the beach sloped gently into the somber forest. The gray sea and the gray covering of high clouds domed together to the horizon. The tide was being sucked rapidly from below where he stood, silent and motionless. A mysterious force drew the water outward. Each wave ran the length of the shore, falling a foot or more below the previous one. In half an hour, a mile of dark, uneasy bottom was laid bare. Then the same mysterious force started climbing toward the forest.
The sand quivered faintly under his feet. Tiny bubbles rose and remained; small holes opened and gasped. Curious shellfish materialized and scurried meaninglessly across the sand. Gulls came and hunted them down. Well, he thought, the devil take me if I was not exactly right. There was nothing but the distant windin the treetops on one side of him and the distant waves on the other. Between the two he moved alone. If he stayed, only the sea would roll itself to his feet and slip away again, over and over in a terrifying vision. He laughed with jarring loudness.
Within the next couple of days a warm, moist, southwest wind blew off the sea. “Talk about a midwinter thaw,” said Lewis. “This is it.”
“The meat is spoiling, and we must have salt for curing,” said Clark. “I’ve said this before. Now I’m forced to organize a salt crew.”
The following day five men were dispatched with five of the largest kettles to build a cairn for the manufacture of salt from seawater. The saltmakers’ camp was erected near Tillamook Head, about fifteen miles southwest of the main fort. The men built a neat, close camp, convenient to wood, salt water, and fresh water from the Clatsop River. They kept the kettles boiling day and night, scraping them out only when they had boiled dry and the salt was thick and crusty.
Ben York was ill with a cold that had settled in his lungs from the strain of lifting the heavy logs to put in the pickets around the fort in the cold rain.
In the evenings Sacajawea brought him herb tea and hot, flat bread from camass roots.
“You are the best gal in this whole outfit.” He pounded his knee and laughed, then had a fit of coughing. She pulled his arms above his head. Then she pounded him on the back so he would breathe deeper. “Me old aching back,” he complained.
“You will feel better, by and by,” she said.
Later Lewis came into his quarters, highly agitated. “Where are the meat bones for my dog? You don’t suppose some flea-bitten buck has walked off with them?”
Clark laughed out loud and wiped the ink off his quill. “Janey knows how to make the most of things. You won’t believe it, but I found her breaking up the bones. She boiled them and it was amazing the quantity of fat and good food she extracted. She flavored the broth with dried sage and fed it to York. He likes it and he’s some better tonight. When she’s through withthose bones there really is not much left for a big dog like Scannon.”
Lewis rushed out to the mess hall to retrieve any other bones before Sacajawea could get her hands on them.
A young man, who caused some excitement, came to the fort with several Clatsops just before sundown on New Year’s Eve. He was much lighter-colored than the Clatsops. Both Clark and Drouillard thought he looked like a Mandan. He was freckled, with long, dusky red hair, and was about twenty-five years old. Lewis and Gass left their checker game to see if they could communicate with him. The man appeared to understand English, but he did not speak a word of it, using Chinook jargon instead. He held out his arm so that they could see tattoed on the outside: “Jack Ramsay.” He indicated that was the name of his father, but he never knew his father himself. He believed himself to be a full-blooded Clatsop. Lewis bought some roots, dried fish, mats of woven rushes, a small deerskin, and some Clatsop tobacco, made of dried clover leaves and heads, in small rush bags, from this son of Jack Ramsay and his Clatsop companions.9
In the morning Sacajawea was awakened by the discharge of a volley of small arms. These were fired at dawn to usher in the New Year. The men spent the afternoon anticipating where each would be the first day of January 1807. Their evening meal was little better than the Christmas dinner—boiled elk, wapato, and cups of water. Toward midnight they went to their beds of pine boughs and were lulled to sleep by the falling winter rain. Some awoke with fits of coughing because the fireplaces smoked terribly, and some woke from the cold coming in the doors left open to get rid of the smoke.
For the most part, the winter was mild. When the snow melted, the grass was green underneath. Spring flowers opened in late January. (The moist Japan wind gives the Oregon coast the temperature of England.)